Why Regret?
Didn't you like the way the ants help
the peony globes open by eating off the glue?
Weren't you cheered to see the ironworkers
sitting on an I-beam dangling from a cable,
in a row, like starlings, eating lunch, maybe
baloney on white with fluorescent mustard?
Wasn't it a revelation to swim all the way
from the estuary, to the river, the kill,
the stream, the run, the brook, the beck,
the sike gone dry, to the shock of a spring?
Didn't you almost shiver to hear the book lice
ticking their sexual dissonance inside the old
Webster's New International, perhaps having
just eaten out of it izle, xyster, and thalassacon?
What did you imagine lay in store anyway
at the end of a world where the sub-substance is
muck, birdlime, slime, mucus, gleet, ooze?
What could the joke have been that night when even
at the tables out of earshot the people were laughing?
Don't worry about becoming emaciated--think of the wren
and how little flesh is needed to make a song.
Didn't it seem somehow familiar when the nymph
split open and the mayfly struggled free
and flew and perched and then its own back
split open and the imago, the true adult,
slowly somersaulted out backwards and
took flight toward the swarm, mouth parts vestigial,
alimentary canal unfit to digest food,
a day or hour left to find the desired one?
Or when Casanova threw the linguine in squid ink
out the window, telling his startled companion,
"The perfected lover does not eat"?
As a child didn't you find it calming to think
of the pinworms as some kind of tiny batons
giving cadence to the squeezes and releases
around the downward march of debris?
Didn't you once glimpse what seemed your own
inner blazonry in the monarchs, veering
and gliding, in desire, in the middle air?
Weren't you reassured at the thought that these
hinged beings might navigate their way to Mexico
by the flair of the dead bodies of ancestors
who fell in this same migration a year ago?
Doesn't it outdo the pleasures of the brilliant concert
to wake in the night and find ourselves
holding hands in our sleep?
- Galway Kinnell
Showing posts with label upper secondary school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label upper secondary school. Show all posts
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Digging- Seamus Heaney
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.
Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.
My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
Seamus Heaney
- from Death of a Naturalist (1966)
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.
Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.
My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
Seamus Heaney
- from Death of a Naturalist (1966)
An Essay on Criticism (Extract)
True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance,
'Tis not enough no Harshness gives Offence,
The Sound must seem an Eccho to the Sense.
Soft is the Strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth Stream in smoother Numbers flows;
But when loud Surges lash the sounding Shore,
The hoarse, rough Verse shou'd like the Torrent roar.
When Ajax strives, some Rocks' vast Weight to throw,
The Line too labours, and the Words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the Plain,
Flies o'er th'unbending Corn, and skims along the Main.
Alexander Pope (1709)
- This extract was given to me in Secondary School (Candy do you recall this one?) and though I obviously didn't understand it all, it somehow stuck in my memory as an example of really well crafted poetry. The entire essay is in heroic couplets and is a good example for teaching iambic pentameter. Its also a good poem to discuss the mechanics of poetry and the kinds of sounds (plosive, fricative, sibilance, assonance etc) which words can introduce. I really enjoyed reading it in its entirety at Uni, though it takes a bit more work!
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance,
'Tis not enough no Harshness gives Offence,
The Sound must seem an Eccho to the Sense.
Soft is the Strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth Stream in smoother Numbers flows;
But when loud Surges lash the sounding Shore,
The hoarse, rough Verse shou'd like the Torrent roar.
When Ajax strives, some Rocks' vast Weight to throw,
The Line too labours, and the Words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the Plain,
Flies o'er th'unbending Corn, and skims along the Main.
Alexander Pope (1709)
- This extract was given to me in Secondary School (Candy do you recall this one?) and though I obviously didn't understand it all, it somehow stuck in my memory as an example of really well crafted poetry. The entire essay is in heroic couplets and is a good example for teaching iambic pentameter. Its also a good poem to discuss the mechanics of poetry and the kinds of sounds (plosive, fricative, sibilance, assonance etc) which words can introduce. I really enjoyed reading it in its entirety at Uni, though it takes a bit more work!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)